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Google has ...

‘Save to Google’ Chrome extension lets you save web pages to read later: Here’s how to use it

Google has quietly rolled out a new Chrome extension called ‘Save to Google,’ which lets you save bookmarks of photos, web pages and other online content to your account. The extension works pretty similar to Pocket’s ‘read it later’ and Facebook’s ‘Save to Facebook’ feature.

To begin with, you need to download the ‘Save to Google’ extension from here. There is also another extension called ‘Save to Google Drive,’ but don’t get confused with that. It lets you save webpage rather than just the bookmarks. After adding installing it to Chrome, a new orange circular button with a star will show up on your toolbar. Now, when you are on a webpage that you would want to read later, simply click on the ‘Save to Google’ button.

Upon clicking the button, it will give you an option to add a tag. All your web pages and images will be saved on Google’s cloud. For instance, if you’re reading something about the latest movie, or about a new car, you can add a tag ‘movies’ or ‘cars,’ or anything else. This tag will make it easier to search for saved pages when needed.

To find your saved web pages and images, you can head over to google.com/save. Here, you can look for your saved bookmarks with the help of tags that you added earlier. We tried the extension, but the google.com/save URL threw a ‘404 page not found’ error. We assume, it could be a server side problem from Google’s end, and should be fixed sooner or later.

NEW DELHI: Search engine giant Google has released a new feature for its Drive desktop app for Windows and OS X. The new update will enable the users to select which folders of sub-folders they wish to sync and deselect the ones they don't.

The users just need to tap Menu> Preference> Sync Options> Sync in order to sync a new folder.

In its official blog post, Aakash Sahney, Google Drive Product Manager, said, "After you sync your files, Drive makes it easy to move and delete items directly from your computer. But doing that with shared files can cause others to lose access. Now, Drive warns you when this might happen."

The tech giant also stated that the Drive can store terabytes of data and the computer hard drive will run out of space if users sync everything. Moreover, when a user deselects a folder, it will be removed from the computer and will be saved in the Drive. The app will also highlight the size of each folder as well.

Earlier this year, Google offered 2GB of free permanent storage to Google Drive users on Safer Internet Day. All users needed to complete a short security checkup on their Google Account.

CALIFORNIA: With Google's free online calendar, it is easy to keep track of life's important events all in one place. But what if the Google Calendar also fixes time for your office meetings.

Yes, the American tech giant has announced a new feature, 'Find a Time', which examines the schedules and suggests times when everyone is free for meetings and get-togethers.

The Android app would examine the schedules of everyone you want to attend an office meeting and pick out a window where everyone's free, the Verge reports.

Google Calendar is a time-management web application and mobile app created by Google. It became available on April 13, 2006, and exited the beta stage in July 2009. Users are required to have a Google Account in order to use the app.

*Google has created 13 emojis for representing men and women at work.
*Four employees have spearheaded this initiative.
*The emojis have been created and finalised after much research.

Furthering the cause of reducing gender inequality in terms of representation in the realm of emojis, four employees from Google have submitted a proposal to the Unicode Consortium to add 13 emoji that better represent professional women. The Unicode Consortium is the body responsible for the creation of new emojis, and the Google team is pushing for the change to be implemented before the end of the year.

Google employees Rachel Been, Nicole Bleuel, Agustin Fonts and Mark Davis are behind this initiative. Elaborating on the reason for these additional emojis, the proposal reads, "We believe we can have a larger positive impact by adding 13 new emoji that depict women across a representative sample of professions. We believe this will empower young women (the heaviest emoji users), and better reflect the pivotal roles women play in the world."

Google Translate for Android updated with Tap to Translate feature, here’s how to use it..

Google has announced a new update for its Google Translate app. The update brings a slew of new features that emphasize on making the user experience better. The company has introduced a new feature called Tap to Translate, which makes it way easier for you to get instant translations of texts within any app you are using.

Whenever Android users copy text in any app, a translation will pop up. This essentially does away with the need to copy paste the text into the Translate app. The feature is available for all 103 languages that Google Translate supports and works on Android smartphones running Android 4.2 and above. The update is being rolled out in phases, so it may take a while to reach to you. (But if you cannot wait, you can download the apk - see the link.)

*Now on Tap will now show definitions of selected text on the screen.
*The feature was introduced last year alongside Android 6.0.
*Now on Tap is available to devices running Android Marshmallow and above.

Google's Now on Tap was one of the highlight features of Android 6.0 Marshmallow introduced last year. It is a Google Search feature that gets triggered when a user holds the home button of the device running Android 6.0 Marshmallow and offers contextual information around the topic mentioned in the screen currently open. It works within any app and automatically searches the context present on the screen by just long pressing the home button.

Google on Wednesday updated its Now on Tap adding new capabilities including system-wide dictionary and search by image. With the latest update, Google Search can now help users with right information by just selecting the text on the screen and Google will offer its definition as well as links to any relevant apps. Google says the new update to Now on Tap is 'available everywhere' though notes that word definitions will be currently available in English only. It says other languages will be rolling out over the coming weeks.

The update to Now on Tap also adds the second capability where users can find a location seen in a photo by simply touching and holding the home button to get a card with more details. Aneto Okonkwo, Product Manager, Google says that the features works across all apps.

Additionally, Google will also provide real time contextual information by using the camera app. The company explains that users via their camera app can get more details about what they are looking at.

Google gives an example of the Bay Bridge, if a user stands in front of the famous structure and opens up the camera app, touch and holds the home button, Now on Tap will offer info card about the structure alongside deep links to relevant apps. Okonkwo explains that this feature works for more than just famous structures.

Google to send push notifications when new devices are added to your account

Up until now, every time a user logged-in from a different device into their Google accounts, users received an email that notified them about log-in from an unrecognized device. Now, in an attempt to make user security more stringent, Google will now send push notifications to protect Android users if they add a new device or in case of a security breach.

If the activity looks suspicious, the user can also choose to ‘Review Account Activity’ and find out details like what device was added, from what location, and other important corresponding information. You can dismiss the notification if it was an expected activity.

While Google already gives two two-step verification and single sign-on features for protection, the new push notification feature will make it much easier for users to keep an eye on their account activity. The feature also adds transparency to a user’s activity and allows them to zero down on a suspicious activity, if any.

Apart from this new feature, Google users if they doubt a suspicious activity of a log-in into their email account by someone other than them, here’s a quick step they could take. Log in to your gmail account on desktop, scroll down to the bottom, you would see ‘Last account activity’ on the bottom right corner, click on ‘Details’.

The click would pop up a tiny window with a detailed account information with minute to minute update of your every last or concurrent activity on Gmail. Look up if there was any activity which wasn’t made by you. In case of a slightest of doubt, on top of the pop-up window you’d notice an option reading ‘Sign out all other web session’, be sure to click on that, and immediately change your password to a much secure one.

New Delhi: Google on Tuesday unveiled a set of enhanced features to bring alive the Olympic mood among Indian fans which will help them to know more about their favourite athletes and sports disciplines.

On Google, when you search for "Olympics" or a similar query, an in-depth search result will be displayed at the top of the Search page or in your Google app, allowing you to get information for a specific country, sport, event or athlete.

You can also discover the event schedule, medal counts, results and trending athletes on Search page, the company said in a statement.

Google will also showcase some Olympics-based search trends and insights with data visualisations.

With Street View in Google Maps, even if users are far away, they can preview the places where the athletes will make history and explore the beauty of Brazil.

To give a glimpse into the Games, you can watch video highlights on YouTube from official broadcasters in more than 60 countries around the world.

As an added bonus, YouTube is sending 15 top creators to the Games, giving users a taste of what it's like to be in Rio with mobile live streaming.

Seems search giant Google has still not lost hopes from its social media platform Google Plus. The company has announced three new updates to Google Plus. Another tweak to the user interface and a few other additions, will greet you the next time you log in to the Google Plus app. Started late last year, the new interface was initially pushed to the app as well as the website only to those who opted for it on logging in. However, the Mountain View-based tech company is now moving all its users to the new redesigned interface within the next few days. The option to switch back to the older interface if required, however, would be there only till the rollout is complete.

For those logging into the app for the first time, it would definitely mean a big change. However, apart from the interface, other changes notably include the feature to insert links and photos in the comments section. Google aims to make conversations more interactive with this move. Also the 'Approve Posting' control button gives moderators and owners of communities the extra edge to control posts and actions initiated by other community members.

The notification center now allows users to see and manage their activities. This is an update to the existing feature where users receive notifications on new posts in real-time. Corporates and business houses would be able to use the benefits of the updated Google Notes over the coming weeks. Google Plus will now become the core service of the Google Apps for Work platform. The redesigned interface will automatically populate on signing in just as it does for other regular users.

For some, however, the changes would roll out over the next few days before the complete migration to the new platform is implemented site-wide.

Google Allo launched, a smart messaging app to take on WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger

Google has today launched its ‘Allo’ smart messaging app, after having unveiled it at I/O 2016 earlier this year. The Allo app has been launched about a month after Google rolled out the Duo video chatting app. With Allo, Google is essentially taking on the likes of WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger by using AI to make the messaging app smarter.

Allo doesn’t really replace the Hangouts chatting app, but is a standalone app that is deeply integrated with Google Assistant. The company has said that the likes of Duo and Allo are more consumer-centric apps, while Hangouts is focused more at enterprises. Google Allo brings in a host of other features like WhisperShout, Ink, end-to-end encryption, and incognito mode among others. One of the talking points however is the app’s smart capabilities. When chatting, the AI monitors the topic of conversation and suggests replies that can be sent with just a tap. Google also says that the app’s image recognition system is nearly 90 percent accurate, and the app will also prompt replies based on the image shared by your friend. So for example, if your friend sends a photo of a dog or a baby, the app will suggest replies like ‘So cute’ and more.

Google has introduced a number of new features on its Chrome browser to make internet surfing better. Browsing experience is better when on a high-speed connection, but it is quite intimidating when on slower 2G connections. Often on slower networks, users cannot get the most from the web. To tackle the issue, Google had already introduced ‘Data Saver’ mode on its Chrome Browser. It compresses the text and images to load content faster, while saving up to 60 percent of your data. Now, Google has also announced data saver support for videos as well, on beta version of Chrome for Android.

Google has announced a new YouTube app built from scratch that gives users more control over how much data is consumed while watching or saving a particular video. YouTube Go will be rolled out in the coming months, and Google is asking users to sign up to be among the first to get the app when it becomes available. Google has built the app with a particular focus on the Indian audience and has also come up with a tagline — “Ab Mazze udao, data nahin!”

Google has quietly launched its Play Music Store in India. It’s been a long wait, especially considering other countries have had this service since 2011. In India, the Play Music Store will compete against the likes of Apple Music, Wynk, Gaana and Saavn among others, which too let users purchase and download music from the respective stores. However, right now the service has some limitations.

When you open the Google Play Store on your Android device, swipe right to open the side panel and you will now see the ‘Music’ option listed between Movies and Books. Alternatively, on the Play Music app, swipe to the right and select the Shop button.